FIPR: Foundation for Information Policy Research

Conference Proceedings or Presentations

• Unprecedented Safeguards For Unprecedented Capabilities, presented at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, National Security Forum Conference, "International Cooperation to Combat Cyber Attacks", 7th December 1999. (Note: PDF file format also available).
• Speech to "The Public Voice in Electronic Commerce", OECD Paris - October 11th, 1999.
• Presentation by Nicholas Bohm on Law enforcement access to keys - legal and human rights issues, Presented at Scrambling for Safety 3.5.
• "Illustrative Proposals for Ways Forward", Caspar Bowden, Director of FIPR, speech at IEE conference on DTI Consultation paper (Building Confidence in Electronic Commerce) 22 March 1999.

Publications

Note -- some of these papers and reports will require Acrobat Reader for viewing. Please download the viewer from Adobe's site.

Papers published by FIPR:

• Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill: Provisions for Government Access to Keys, a report by Brian Gladman. February 28, 2000.
• FT: Caspar Bowden - Decrypt with care, December 21, 1999.
• Response to the UK DTI Consultation on Secure Electronic Commerce presents FIPR's views on the upcoming legislation (April 1999).
• Signature Directive Consultation presents the results of FIPR's first exercise, a consultation exercise on an EU draft directive on harmonising digital signature law.
• Strategic Export Controls:  The Impact of Cryptography presents a response by FIPR to the UK Department of Trade and Industry.  Also available in pdf.

Relevant publications written by FIPR trustees and advisory council members:

• The Privacy Risks of Public Key Infrastructures, co-authored by Gus Hosein, and presented at the Data Protection Commissioner's conference in Hong Kong, September 13, 1999.
• The Resurrecting Duckling, a paper co-authored by FIPR Chairman Ross Anderson.
• EU and the US: The Efficacy of Data Protection Legislation and the Anonymous Alternative, written by Gus Hosein in his role as Policy Counsel to Zero-Knowledge Systems.
• Cryptography and Democracy: Dilemmas of Freedom, a paper by Caspar Bowden, and Yaman Akdeniz, in Liberty eds., Liberating Cyberspace: Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and the Internet, London: Pluto Press, 1999, 81-125.
• A report by Brian Gladman entitled The Wassenaar Arrangement and Controls on Cryptographic Products (available in pdf);
• A paper by Brian Gladman entitled Key recovery -- meeting the needs of users or key escrow in disguise? This paper was presented at the 1998 EPIC Cryptography Policy Conference;
• The Law Society position on the proposed electronic commerce legislation, which sets out the effect on the legal profession both as users and as advisers to industry and to the citizen;
• A qualitative review by Gus Hosein of various responses from industry and individuals to the UK Department of Trade and Industry 1997 Consultation paper on the licensing of Trusted Third Parties for the provision of encryption services. This paper was published in the 1998 EPIC Cryptography and Privacy Sourcebook;
• A paper by Nicholas Bohm entitled Do we need new digital signature law?
• A briefing on the likely effects of a DTI proposal to extend the export controls maintained under the Wassenaar Arrangement to cover intangible exports by email, http and the like;
• The Risks of Key Recovery, Key Escrow, and Trusted Third-Party Encryption was written for the US Senate; it examines the government requirements for access to keys and attempts to outline the technical risks, costs, and implications of deploying systems that would satisfy them;
• The GCHQ Protocol and its Problems points out a number of flaws in the protocol used by the UK government to secure its electronic mail, and whose use the Secure Electronic Commerce Bill appears designed to promote;
• The Global Trust Register is a book which contains the fingerprints of the world's most important public keys. It thus implements a top-level certification authority using paper and ink rather than an electronic system, and thus shows that government attempts to license CAs are equivalent to the censoring of printed books;
• Crypto in Europe - Markets, Law and Policy surveyed the uses of cryptography in Europe, looked at the technical and legal threats, and discussed the shortcomings of public policy;
• Information technology in medical practice: safety and privacy lessons from the United Kingdom provides a high-level overview of the safety and privacy problems encountered in UK healthcare computing over the last few years;
• The DeCODE Proposal for an Icelandic Health Database analyses a controversial proposal to collect all Icelanders' medical records into a single central database that will support genetic and other research, as well as health service management functions;
• Security in Clinical Information Systems was commissioned and published by the British Medical Association. It sets out a number of rules that are designed to uphold ethical and safety principles in healthcare computing.

Conferences organised by or in conjunction with FIPR:

• Scrambling for Safety 3.5, September 23, 1999.
• The 1999 Scrambling for Safety, organised in conjunction with Privacy International;
• The Scrambling for Safety workshop on the 29th May 1998;
• The Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime, 12-18 September 1999

The Foundation for Information Policy Research is registered in England and Wales under the Companies Act 1985 as a private company limited by guarantee (No.3574631). Application for charitable status is in progress.

Last Revised: March 1, 2000